Head of Tumor Biology, Research Unit Oncology

Work Your Magic with us

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you've got big plans '“ so do we Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people's lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

Merck has an innovative oncology and immuno-oncology pipeline which includes early and late-stage programs with potentially ground-breaking modalities and mechanisms, targeting difficult-to-treat cancers, building on our brands directed to urothelial cancer (UC), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), renal cell carcinoma (RCC), colorectal cancer (CRC), and head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC).

Our robust Oncology R&D pipeline focuses on the discovery and development of innovative drugs in the scientific areas of tumor immunology, DNA damage response, oncogenic signaling and targeted delivery. Our deep drug hunting capabilities in areas of small molecule therapies, mono
- and bi-specific monoclonal antibodies, targeted degradation and antibody drug conjugates have led to us building a competitive and exciting pipeline to bring the next wave of therapies to cancer patients.

**Your role
You will be accountable to provide guidance in the development, selection, and design of mechanistic studies, as well as in vitro assays using cutting-edge technologies and physiologically relevant cell models, to drive the functional characterization of NMEs and support pipeline progress. You will need to oversee multiple projects simultaneously while ensuring efficient resource allocation and management, including CRO coordination and project funding/partnerships on enabling technologies. Your ability to manage and resolve high-complexity technical, operational, and organizational issues is absolutely essential. In your role as a scientific expert, you identify & evaluate external opportunities in the oncology area.

You will collaborate and interface with diverse cross-functional teams of the different R&D disciplines and communicate with senior management to outline research goals and provide updates on research progress and outcomes. To leverage expertise and resources you will collaborate with academic institutions and external experts. You will represent the company on scientific conferences and establish relationships with key opinion leaders to expand the scientific network and stay up-to-date with cutting-edge technologies.

As a leader, you will manage multiple teams and are responsible to provide coaching, and performance feedback and creating a collaborative work environment. You will mentor and promote the professional development and training of people. Your clear focus on impact generation and fostering a drug-hunting mindset will be key.

Drawing upon your comprehensive understanding of how the R&D functions and sub-functions interact, you will filter, prioritize, analyze, and validate complex and dynamic information from diverse internal and external sources. Building on your broad expertise, you will play an important role in external innovation and business development activities by actively engaging in identifying and evaluating opportunities for collaboration, licensing, and acquisition of assets to enrich the Oncology pipeline.

**Who you are:
- PhD/MD degree or equivalent in Oncology or related field
- Deep and broad expertise in oncology, combined with in-depth knowledge of competitors as well as challenges, developments and opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry
- Deep understanding of drug discovery and translational research
- Excellent leadership capabilities
- Ability to lead through influence and collaborate effectively with leaders of other departments
- Passion for people management and experience in managing large teams of scientists (lab heads and their direct reports) globally, internally and externally through collaborations
- Ability to oversee and prioritize multiple pre-clinical projects and advance in a timely manner
- Ability to lead the analysis of highly complex issues in a technical area and establish resolutions/ decision points is a given
- High energy and personal dynamics to drive innovation
- Organizational tale